On March 6, 2019, 83 civil society organizations and 20 individuals asked delegates to the World Health Assembly (WHA) to support a proposed resolution on “Improving the transparency of markets for drugs, vaccines and other health-related technologies.” A copy of the open letter is available below, and also as a PDF file.

For context, on February 1, 2019, the government of Italy submitted the text of draft resolution to the WHO, with a cover letter noting the aim of providing an “authoritative mandate to strengthen WHO’s technical work on the transparency of the costs of research and development and the transparency of prices” for discussion under agenda item 11.7 – Addressing the global shortage of, and access to, medicines and vaccines, during the 72nd session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2019.

A PDF copy of the letter from Dr. Giulia Grillo, Italy’s Minister of Health, and the draft resolution are attached here:

According to World health organization (WHO), Adherence is defined as ‘extent to which a person’s behavior—taking medication, following a diet and/or executing lifestyle changes, corresponds with agreed recommendations from a healthcare provider’. Hence, It may not be sufficient if a person’s behavior strongly corresponds with the agreed recommendation to the prescribed medications. In other words, patient's clinical outcome may not be achieved adequately with good medication adherence. There are other behavioral domains to be considered including following dietary recommendations and lifestyle modifications to improve health outcomes such as glycemic control in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM).

In the current study, most type 2 DM patients (74%) have been found to poorly follow dietary recommendations. This was partly due to lack of knowledge, lack of diet education, inability to afford the cost of healthy diet and poor awareness about the benefit of dietary recommendations.

YP-CDN joins Oxfam and 240 other civil society organizations, academics and activists concerned with access to medicines, human rights and health from around the world to urge that high prices limiting access to affordable medicines, diagnostics and vaccines be addressed in the third High-Level Meeting (HLM) on NCDs.

Individual data revealed that depression remains a major psychiatry condition in perinatal period. However, its burden haven not yet been comprehensively assessed nationally. This review determined the magnitude of perinatal depression and major factors leading to the episode of depressive disorder among mothers in Ethiopia. The study indicated that, the pooled prevalence of perinatal depression was 25.8% [95% CI, 24.6%-27.1%]. Predisposing factors such as, having obstetric complications in previous and/or this pregnancy [RR: 2.74 (95% CI, 1.48-5.06), I2 = 67.7%], and having unplanned pregnancy [RR: 2.73 (95% CI, 2.11-3.53), I2 = 0%] were the major factors associated with perinatal depression. To attenuate these factors and to realize the sustainable development goals (SDGs) outlined by united nation, much attention should be given to improve maternal mental health through reduction of identified modifiable factors.